Lecturer finds way to ‘silence’ World Cup vuvuzela

On how to silence the noise from vuvuzelas at the World Cup in South Africa, this press release came from DCU today.

Interestingly it notes after method two that “This could be done by broadcasters”, so now there’s no excuse for the likes of RTE to claim they can’t do anything?…

So you’ve started watching the World Cup in South Africa, you’re enjoying the games, but the thing that’s spoiling it for many are those vuvuzelas. Until FIFA gets around to banning them, there is another way of reducing the sound on your television. Dr Sean Marlow, lecturer in DCU’s School of Engineering, tells us how.

We gave it a try on a Samsung TV, and while it doesn’t remove the vuvuzela noise completely, it does tone it down. It also takes some of the depth out of the commentary, as voices sound less rounded and full bodied, perhaps no bad thing.

The settings should work on most TVs where you can make changes to the sound levels in this way, but if they don’t on your television you do have another option.

Marlow Method B:

Play the sound through your PC sound card. Run the free program Audacity and set up notch [cancellation] filters at frequencies 233, 466, 932 and 1864Hz